Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols in the Data Link Layer facilitate connection establishments and communications among different end-systems in a local area network (LAN). There are several wireless MAC protocols standardized to operate in wireless local area networks (WLANs). In IEEE 802.11 standards, a wireless communication radio interface (in a portable device, an access point, or a base station) senses and captures an idle channel to establish a wireless local area network connection to another wireless device. Basic Service Set (BSS) refers to a set of mobile stations that are within each others' communication ranges. Although there are multiple channels in IEEE 802.11 standards, the MAC protocol in a BSS enables the sharing of one single channel among multiple mobile stations (or mobile hosts or portable devices). Due to the broadcast nature of the wireless medium, only two hosts can communicate at a particular time instant while all the other stations within the signal transmission range of the two hosts (i.e., in the same BSS) must defer their attempts to communicate in order to avoid packet collisions. Such a configuration falls within a single-channel wireless network model. The MAC protocols in IEEE 802.11 standards belong to the single-channel class. However, problems associated with the single-channel wireless model include scalability (i.e., the number of active mobile stations increases within a BSS), and rapid throughput degradation as the number of active mobile hosts increases.
Accordingly, there is a need for wireless systems with medium access control protocols that, among other things, provide improved bit error rates, mitigate the difficulties associated with hidden and exposed stations, and/or mitigate channel capture problems. There is a need for medium access control methods that, among other things, provide faster connection setup, reduce the blocking probability, allow multiple active connections simultaneously, offer higher average throughput performance, and offer improved system scalability with robust connectivity.